This invention generally relates to displays and more particularly concerns color matrix displays and even more particularly relates to color matrix displays having high position resolution and image quality requirements.
Presently, across the display industry, there is a significant effort underway to increase the image quality and position resolution of characters upon color matrix displays. Typically, color matrix displays consist of a regular patterned array of separately addressable elements, with each element corresponding to one of the three preferred colors; red, green and blue. This element matrix is common to liquid crystal displays, thin film electroluminescent displays, etc. Frequently, it is desirable to have a high information content display and in such applications the character image quality and the position resolution become increasingly important.
One type of matrix display that has been commonly used in the past is a delta matrix where each pixel is treated much like a pixel in a CRT. During line drawing the independent separate color matrix elements are grouped into pixels each having one red, one blue and one green element. This pixel or picture element arrangement is discussed in Section 1.6 on pages 18-21 of Flat Panel Displays and CRT's by Lawrence E. Tannis Jr. published by VanNostrand Reinhold Company, of New York, N.Y., which is incorporated herein by this reference.
While this pixel approach has been utilized extensively in the past it does have several serious drawbacks. One predominant drawback of such a design is that when a diagonal line is drawn across the display matrix, the line frequently appears jagged. Another problem with such a design is that the position resolution of any line drawn upon the matrix is limited by the pixel size. Additionally, the pixel approach does not allow computation of a unique intensity of each element within the pixel, thereby reducing the intensity resolution of the display.
Consequently, there exists a need for an improved color matrix display which provides for improved character position resolution and improved character image quality.